


idle hands are the devil's best friend

by QZB



Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:35:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23270326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QZB/pseuds/QZB
Summary: This Helena can do. Well, Helena can do quite a lot of things but normally they’re not as delicate as this. Her hands aren’t made for delicate work, not anymore. Her hands are calloused and built for nothing but death and pain. There was once a time when they were softer, when her mother taught her cross stitch and Luca would bother her until they built his newest lego set together and—(or, Helena makes arrows because she's in desperate need of a distraction and it goes about as well as you'd expect)
Relationships: Helena Bertinelli/Dinah Lance
Comments: 15
Kudos: 153





	idle hands are the devil's best friend

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the Moby Rich song "Happy Pill"

Helena’s mother always told her that she had nervous hands. All of the women in her family did. 

“We may work in the shadows, darling, but the Bertinelli women are never still,” her mother used to tell her, a sparkle in her eye. 

Carmela Bertinelli was never still. She was always pacing, hands dancing over a piece of cross stitch, or writing down business orders for her father. When she thinks about it the only time she saw her mother fully still was when…

_Focus, Helena, focus._

The arrow. For Cassandra. You’re making arrows for Cassandra because as much as she’ll make fun of you for a crossbow she’s mentioned that she wants to learn to shoot a real bow and arrow.

So Helena’s making a 14 year old a bow and some arrows, because she’s a very responsible adult in desperate need of something to do with her hands.

Making arrows is calming, something she hasn’t done since she’s switched to her crossbow, but once you learn how to make something, once something becomes so ingrained in your head you could do it in your sleep, it’s easy. It’s like riding a bike, except Helena doesn’t actually know how to ride a bicycle.

Start with the shaft. Port Orford Cedar. Expensive, yes, but when you’ve got mob family money is anything really _expensive_ anymore?

The answer is no, which is Helena’s excuse for dropping way too much money on wood and supplies for the workshop. Nobody can really tell her that she _can’t_ waste money on outfitting the old warehouse they’ve been using as a Birds of Prey headquarters with a workshop for weaponry. After all she did buy the place.

In the last 3 months they’ve made quite a few improvements to the warehouse, installing small living quarters for them to crash at when they get too tired or beat up, a kitchen, a garage, and something that resembles a living room but is really just two old couches they found at a Goodwill. Helena’s done most of the construction herself. It’s nothing really complicated, putting up some walls and installing a door or two. There’s still some work to be done when it comes to electrical wiring in the kitchen, and the sink leaks sometimes, but it’s on her list of things to fix— right after the draft that comes in from the street level window.

_Focus, Helena, focus._

The arrowhead. Steel. Heated, shaped and sanded down by hand. Make sure it fits onto the shaft, sand it down so there’s room for the adhesive.

This Helena can do. Well, Helena can do quite a lot of things but normally they’re not as delicate as this. Her hands aren’t made for delicate work, not anymore. Her hands are calloused and built for nothing but death and pain. There was once a time when they were softer, when her mother taught her cross stitch and Luca would bother her until they built his newest lego set together and—

She zones out for a second, resulting in a sharp pain on the palm of her hand. 

Fuck. 

She looks down to see that the metal arrowhead she was filing down had slipped out of the clamp and was kind of, sort of, embedded in the palm of her hand.

_Fuck._

Helena closes her eyes for a few seconds, letting the pain wash over her, and takes a few breaths to steady herself. 

_Place the pain in a box._

_Close the box._

_Get up. Fight back. Get up._

Then she does what any logical person would do: she walks upstairs to ask nicely for someone to remove it.

She’s a little woozy as she starts to walk but she opts to ignore it, or at least try to ignore it, but as she’s walking up the stairs she stumbles over the second to last one. She twists in midair so that she lands harshly on her back, cradling her hand against her chest so it doesn’t get jolted too bad.

“You alright there, crossbow?” Renee Montoya arches an eyebrow as she looks over her coffee cup at the assassin on the floor of the landing.

“Yes… wait, no… where do we keep the first aid kit?”

“Kitchen. What happened to your hand?”

“Bad splinter.” Helena hugs her hand a little closer to her chest.

“Dinah!” Renee turns and yells up the other flight of stairs. “Crossbow fucked up her hand, she could use your help!”

Helena squints. “Why can’t you help me?”

Renee gestures vaguely as she walks away. “I have a thing.”

“Jackass,” Helena grunts out, standing up and moving into the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of vodka and the first aid kit with her good hand. 

The soft steps of Dinah go unnoticed until the singer steps in front of her with wide eyes. “Holy shit, Helena, what did you do?” 

Helena grunts noncommittally as Dinah yanks her hand forward. “I was making arrows and got distracted.”

Dinah clicks her tongue a few times. “How deep is this? I don’t want to take this out if it’ll seriously fuck up your hand.”

“Get a ruler.”

“What?”

“I can tell you how deep it is in my hand if we measure what isn’t in my hand.”

“You’re insane, anyone ever tell you that?”

“You and Renee, on a pretty much daily basis,” Helena deadpans as she puts her thumb up against the metal arrowhead jutting from her hand. “It’s not deep, probably like an eighth of an inch?”

“Are you always this accurate when you make your arrows?” Dinah asks as she carefully takes Helena’s hand and puts it over the kitchen sink, pouring vodka over the metal wound, poking around it.

“I usually use a— ah fuck— a ruler,” Helena grits out.

“Hey, look at me. Tell me about it,” Dinah instructs softly, lifting Helena’s chin with two fingers to make eye contact before she looks back down to her hand. Helena’s brain short circuits and she has to take a full few seconds to process that Dinah did ask her a question and she should probably answer.

“Tell you about what? Rulers?”

“No dummy, tell me how you make an arrow.”

“My crossbow uses bolts not arrows, so this was something different. I— fuck that hurts— was trying to make some wooden arrows and a bow. For Cassandra."

“Why are you giving the kid arrows?”

“She’s trying to get me to teach her archery, so I figured I should test it and get everything prepared before her birthday. It takes a while to make a bow, in case you didn’t— ow, shit be careful— know.”

“Tell me about it?”

“You’re just trying to distract me from my hand but you can just pull it out I’ll be fine,” Helena states with a roll of her eyes.

Dinah holds up the metal arrowhead with a triumphant smile, “Two steps ahead of you, sweetheart.” 

Helena looks down at her hand, still bleeding softly but hurting a lot less than she expected it to. Whether that’s because there’s no longer a metal arrowhead sticking out of it or because Dinah just called her sweetheart she doesn’t know but either way she’ll take it. 

“Tell me if anything hurts, okay?” Dinah grabs Helena’s hand and gently closes her fist, then bends each finger out and back in.

Helena shakes her head no, but if her hand hurts she probably couldn’t feel it, couldn’t really process anything outside the feeling of Dinah’s soft fingers gently curling around her calloused fist. 

Dinah lets go of her hand and Helena immediately misses the warmth.

She takes this moment to examine the arrowhead Dinah pulled from her hand. It's actually pretty good if she does say so herself. Thankfully the end that was in her hand wasn't the sharp one because while she definitely wasn't going to give Cass arrows sharpened to a deadly point like the ones she uses, she wasn't about to skimp either.

Dinah's hands are back on her own and Helena freezes, glancing back down to see a bandage go over the wound (which wasn't even that deep), protective gauze wrapped around her hand (which was unnecessary), and Dinah tops it off by slipping a purple surgical glove over her right hand.

“Is the surgical glove really necessary?” Helena holds the hand up in front of her, as though examining it for the first time.

Dinah raises an eyebrow. “Oh so you _weren’t_ planning on going downstairs as soon as I turned around to keep doing whatever dangerous bullshit you were doing?”

Helena crosses her arms like a petulant child. “I was going to wait.”

“Ten minutes?”

“A… few minutes at least.”

Dinah grins a megawatt smile and for the first time in a long time Helena feels _still._

“At least wait for me before going back to your weird vigilante dungeon?”

And Helena is so, _so_ powerless to resist. 

“...okay”

For the most part Helena sticks to it. She waits patiently as Dinah disinfects the sink with a quick vodka rinse (they really should invest in some actual disinfectant) and methodically puts everything back into the first aid kit. Helena doesn't even realize she's tapping on the countertop until Dinah speaks, startling her out of her thoughts.

"You know, for a trained assassin you're pretty shit at sitting still."

"I can be still if I need to be!” the assassin snaps. “I’m just” she stops for a moment, trying to find the right words “comfortable here.”

Dinah smiles, a softer smile than the one that knocked her off her feet earlier, but one that still hits her like a fucking truck.

Helena's brain is stuck on a loop of _wow she's pretty_ and _wow my hand hurts_ so she does what she does best.

She runs.

Well, she doesn't run as much as she abruptly stands and walks out of the kitchen, turning the corner to head back down the stairs to her workshop. She's stopped by a soft hand on her arm and a firm "no."

"What?"

"I know you and I know you're going to go downstairs, take off that glove, and go back to working like you didn't just stab yourself in the hand."

As much as Helena hates to admit it, that _was_ exactly what she was going to do.

Dinah shifts so she's standing directly between her and the stairs down to the workshop, crossing her arms. "So no."

“I need to finish this for Cassandra. I promised.” Helena attempts to sidestep Dinah but is stopped by firm hands on her shoulders.

“No.”

“I _promised.”_ She looks back up at Dinah then and sees a teasing smile break across the face of the singer.

“I know. So I’m gonna help you,” Dinah says slowly, like she’s explaining the concept to a toddler.

"You? You’re going to help me make arrows? Have you ever even worked in a shop before? Do you know what a hammer is?" Helena sidesteps Dinah a second time, and this time she's allowed to descend the stairs into her workshop.

"I took woodshop in high school, made a chessboard, and got an A. I think I can handle being your left hand."

Helena takes a moment to look Dinah up and down, taking in the pale yellow crop top and black skinny jeans, and if her brain takes a moment to shut down and reboot she covers it well with a cough and a stuttered, “you should probably change first.”

Dinah breaks out that megawatt smile again, grabbing one of Helena’s oversized flannels off a nearby workbench and putting it on. “I’m ready to work. Let’s go.”

“That’s not what I-”

“Helena?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up and let me help you.”

And Helena’s instinct is to scoff and say, “ _A Bertinelli needs no help. They fight their own battles. They win by their own merit._ ”

But the throbbing pain in her hand and the unsteady thump of her heart has her saying, “yeah okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> :)  
> Find me on twitter @WhoopsItsGay and tumblr: Kyonite


End file.
